


Jazz

by ScarletteStar1



Category: Homeland
Genre: Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Mental Illness, Song fic, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:47:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24868600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/pseuds/ScarletteStar1
Summary: Carrie thinks in jazz. . . she thinks in an intricate code that is not meant to be broken, a series of interlocking patterns that contain all her secrets, and shame, and stories. . .
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Peter Quinn, Nicholas Brody/Carrie Mathison, Saul Berenson/Carrie Matthison
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Jazz

She thinks in jazz.

Thoughts syncopate through coils of her brain. They twist and weave in ways that shouldn’t make sense, or connect, but then,

_**POP!** _

They fall into spaces no one guesses, and rarely understand.

Rhythms blend, overlap, slide in patterns and whisper secrets to her alone.

“We all missed something that day,” Saul says. “Human error exists, Carrie. Accept it. The clock will still strike midnight. Birds will still fly south for the winter. The sun will rise.”

Coltrane swoons _Over the Rainbow_ from a trumpet. A piano twinkles like grass when sun appears after a storm. Grass. Green. Carrie demands a green pen over and over, a refrain refusing improvisation. “Not everyone is me,” she hisses, a snare drum.

Lost in mazes of melody, she likes it. Glasses of white wine flow effortlessly and sparkle like her fake ring. She follows the mellifluous horn of Saul’s voice, but prefers the husky clarinet of Brody speaking things she’s longed to hear all her life, things neither Saul nor the CIA could ever offer.

“I wanna be your pool boy.”

“I don’t have a pool,” her laughter is a velvet evening gown.

“A quiet life then. We’ll raise our kid someplace wild and free like Maine. I’ll teach history.” His voice is a uniform falling off at his feet.

“She’d have wild blueberry eyes like you,” Carrie’s face hurts to smile. “Maine makes sense,” she nods against his chest and feels his arms close around her. She inhales and he smells like pine, like the fractured bark of branches he’s collected to keep them warm through the night.

“Goodnight, Love.”

“Wait, no!” Lights brighten. Discordant crescendo slows to a deep, bass plucking itself to snap entirely. It groans; a rope stretched beyond taut. “Nnnnononono,” she whimpers and sees the rope is chain, clanking now like a drum, almost lazy, careless that it is about to kill.

_I didn't want you there, Carrie._

_But I was. I held your eyes. You saw me, right?_

_Yeah._

_I'll see your face in my mind for all time. I think I'll cry for you forever._

_No, Love, not like that. People lose children in war and they don't even cry forever. You can't._

“Your daddy went somewhere over the rainbow,” she tells Franny. She’s slight like Carrie, but not really like her in any other way. Seeing her daughter makes Carrie remembers listening to Regan, dressed for Halloween like a lion.

_No._

It was her father listening to news, staticky, hard to understand. Years later it made sense when she learned about the events in history, and then again in special training for the military.

“Stop beating yourself up,” Saul repeats. “It was ten fifteen twenty years ago. We all messed up.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Carrie snaps. “I’m fucking sick of listening to you.” Carrie forwards the track. Saul disappears with Brody into the maze. “You believe me, don’t you?” She turns to Quinn. They traverse chaotic city streets. Berlin. New York. DC.

“My favorite thing,” Quinn smiles.

“Franny’s bunny,” she gasps. “She needs it. It hopped into the hedges. Can you get it, Quinn?”

A pulsating beat quickens, threatens to sweep Carrie someplace in the maze with croissants and coffee. Really good coffee. A wire brush beats a cymbal. Carrie sways to the saxophone of Quinn’s voice. “Anything you need,” he says and she is already forgetting the sorrow of his smile.

_You fucking shot me!_

_It was the mission._

_You kissed me too._

_I wanted more, Carrie. You have no idea how much more I wanted._

“His name was Peter Quinn,” she says, chest tight, chords progressing into something wild. She closes her eyes against it. She puts up her hair. She runs. She rolls her eyes at Estes, Dar Adal, and Lockhart who chastise her- a whiney trombone chorus. She shakes her head, shakes them off until it’s just Saul peering through his glasses. “That new paradigm? This is it. I’m someone different.”

“No you aren’t.”

“I am.”

“You’re mine.”

“Fuck you, Saul,” she mouths thickly through drugs.

“I need you.”

“If happy little bluebirds fly,” she sings.

“What?”

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,” she never knew he could look so boyish, so fragile as he does in the hospital hallway. “You’ve never needed anyone and I’m damaged, remember?”

"You broke his heart when you walked away," his old friend said.

“Didn’t he he know he broke me? Possibly entirely?”

“Oh no. Saul’s heart is old, he is brittle and calcified. It doesn’t take much to damage such a heart beyond repair. You are young you will mend.”

“But he told me I was damaged. I’ll always be alone. Unbalanced.”

She sees her breath. Is it always cold now? It seems she’s always cold. Russian winter with ice so thick, but Rasputin survived. That was long before jazz was invented. The dark monk had no need for jazz, but it’s Carrie’s mother tongue.

Jazz is brilliant; a code unto its own. It shouldn’t be broken by anyone except the creator, and yet it has the potential to be enjoyed by masses.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” She doesn’t recognize this voice.

“I want to go home, Saul,” she kneels in front of him and sobs in the middle of the desert.

"I've made a fool of my time, Carrie."

"But you told me the sun would rise, Saul! You said that!" Sand stings her face. Glass shatters. 

“Bodies and blood, bodies and blood,” Aayan scats.

"Mommy are you coming back?" Franny's voice rings plaintive. 

She shivers. Her body falls apart in fragments of notes, phrases of song that many people find discordant, unpleasant. She is a pile of pale scales longing for cohesion in the dark.

Her hair sparkles like moon.

Moon river. A bridge over a river.

She runs.

She breaks the code.

_Please take me home._

She cries in his arms and doesn't know if she'll ever be able to stop. 

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a piece I've been working on in my mind for a very long time. . . I wanted to weave together some of the fragments of the opening credit segments and play with how they might reflect Carrie's thought process and internalized trauma. Thank you most kindly for taking time from your day to read this. My heart is with you. xoxo.
> 
> songs used for inspiration in this piece: Coltrane's Somewhere Over the Rainbow, A Few of My Favorite Things, and Regina Spektor's Rejazz.


End file.
